[snip]

...

compared to (my experience of) the problem. We get spam, so do our customers, but it's a couple of messages, each of ~500 bytes. Even on modems connections [snip]

Because you happen to not be getting very much is no reason to believe that everyone is so lucky. Anyone who has been around for any length of time, posts or has posted to newsgroups, is the contact for any number of domains/ASNs/netblocks, or even hosts any number of domains gets bucketfuls.

Often times, they work from old archives of Usenet as well. I've received garbage forwarded from old addresses I haven't used since '92 or '93.

It is unrealistic to believe that one's expereince is sufficeintly representative to be able to generalize and define the scope of the whole problem.

I think another question to ask is how much are we willing to spend to fight spam. Justin Newton(in the NANOG meeting) mentioned $400 million as what *all* ISPs spent to deal spam. There's definitely the support and administrative costs dealing with spam. But Paul Vixie's somewhat extreme RBL(which I have communicated to Paul) and associated filters would not eliminate those costs but shift it to higher level support due to unreachable mail servers, routes, etc. And with plethora of ISPs implementing their own blend of enforcements, it will require more costly high level engineering support to deal with the spam related support issues. And filters aren't really equitable if one is willing to filter out or punish some domains or networks permitting spam *but* will leave aol.com, msn.com and UUNet's networks alone. Filter implementations should be equitable. And if Paul's RBL seeks to punish ISPs whose email/Web address appears in the spam, then perhaps the RBL should also include the network space for all the telcos and long distance companies whose 800 number appears in the spam. It will go a long ways for all ISPs to keep their SMTP servers to their own networks along with certain DNS validations for incoming mail. And the POP authenticated SMTP services will allow ISPs using UUNet's networks to limit their customer's mail to going through their mail servers only. I agree with an earlier post to spend more time pushing through with the proposed legislation to fight spam. I think it's great we are having this discussion on means to stop and/or control spam. I am only hoping our zeal to stop spam and punish spammers will not create chaos and make the Net less usable for the common folks whose use of the Internet is what is making the Net thrive and keeping us all in business. Regards, Turnando Fuad NSNet